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Even though Atari was
not very forthcoming about revealing technical information, the company nevertheless
took a positive step towards fostering a strong user community with the
creation of a new division, the Atari Program Exchange (APX).
The APX featured
a free quarterly mail order catalog of user-written software that went to all
Atari computer owners who opted into the program. Users could both submit their
own programs and purchase the programs of others, who would receive a small
royalty from each sale, as well as occasional prize money.
A great deal of
productivity, utility and entertainment software was produced, with some of the
best titles later receiving full commercial releases, like Chris Crawford's
turn-based strategy game, Eastern Front (1941)
(1981), and Greg Christensen's shooting game, Caverns of Mars (1981).
Other APX notables include future First
Star Software founder Fernando Herrera's My
First Alphabet (1981) educational program, a $25,000 APX Star Award winner,
and John Palevich's Dandy (1983), a user-extendable
four player action dungeon crawling game believed to be the inspiration for Atari's
hit arcade game, Gauntlet (1985).
Dandy would receive its own update in
the form of Dark Chambers, released
for Atari 8-bit computers, as well as the Atari 2600 and 7800, in 1988.
As a follow-up to his impressive
side-scrolling shooter from 1983, The Tail of Beta Lyrae, Philip Price's RPG
Alternate Reality: The City (1985) probably took better overall advantage of
the performance capabilities of the Atari 8-bits than any game before
or since, with as many as 63 colors on-screen at once and synchronized sound.
With a strong arcade
catalog and an established development and publishing system, Atari itself
released many important titles. Besides a large cache of productivity and
educational software, Atari came through with arcade translations and a few
original titles. Although not quite as well supported as the Apple II or
Commodore 64, the Atari computers were targeted by most of the same software publishers.
Many of the industry's top games either originated on Atari's system or were
ported later.
Standout titles include
Atari's beloved space combat simulation, Star
Raiders (1980); Synapse's multiscreen magic-based action game, Necromancer (1982), underground
helicopter action game, Fort Apocalypse
(1982) and animated cartoon platformer, Alley
Cat (1983); First Star Software's attractive arcade shooter, Astro Chase (1982); Datasoft's licensed
action platformers, including Bruce Lee (1984),
Conan (1984), Zorro (1985) and The Goonies
(1986), as well as Philip Price's technical masterpiece, role-playing game Alternate Reality: The City (1985); and Lucasfilm's
adventure shooter featuring fractal geometry-based landscapes, Rescue on Fractalus (1984).
Modern Activity
Generally speaking,
most Atari 8-bit systems with at least 48KB are compatible with the majority of
software. However, incompatibilities arose as Atari revised the operating
system of the later XL and XE systems. Atari provided a translator disk
that helped to temporarily revert the newer operating environments to what was
on the original 400 and 800 systems, solving most compatibility
issues. However, certain cartridges released during the XEGS era will not run on anything but a true 64KB system,
though others require just 48KB or less.
"The overnight switch from the 400 and 800 to the
XL series may confuse some potential buyers. It isn't always easy to figure out
which machines have which features - and Atari's dismal naming system doesn't
exactly endow each model with a distinctive personality." - Electronic
Games magazine, December 1983
Optimally, a hardcore collector
would have both a 48KB 800 with GTIA and a minimum 64KB XL or XE system,
for the full spectrum of native compatibility. However, more casual collectors
are fine with just the latter. Today, most of the various Atari 8-bit computer
variations are available for about $50, give or take, with the final choice
often coming down to a buyer's preference for a particular system style and
class.
The XEGS came with both a light
gun and a classic Atari-style joystick with gray styling instead of the usual
all black. The joystick functioned as expected, but the light gun was generally
inaccurate.
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You have to wonder how much damage Atari did by failing to compete outside the US.
I was a little disappointed to see errors in the very first part of the article though. The Atari 8-bit computers had a resolution of 320x200 and in fact could be programmed to display 384x262, the OS just defaulted to 320x200. They could display 128 colors AND get all of them on the screen unlike the Apple 2 which had 16 colors in low-res and 6 in hi-res and the Commodore 64 which had 16 colors period. (In fact the first screenshot on page 5 shows more than 16 colors on the screen)
Neither the 400 or the 800 had "monitor output". Both had RF (TV) output and that was it.
"Most users outfitted the four slots with a 10KB ROM". There was no such thing as a 10k rom. They were all 8k. There were 3 expansion slots for ram and 2 cartridge slots. One cartridge slot was usually used for BASIC. An 8k cartridge.
Atari was not secretive at all about their hardware or software. I still have the detailed publically available manuals. Far more details than anything Apple, Commodore or Tandy Radio Shack ever made available.
While I'm at it, other random tidbits:
The Atari system was the only 8bit consumer system with a *real* OS. For example Apple's was a complete hack, so bad to issue disk commands you had to use the print statement in basic and embed Ctrl-D in a string follow by the command since the Apple 2's OS/Basic was never designed for IO. Commodore's was not much better. Atari's actually had "device drivers" so your programs didn't need to know what device they were loading from.
Atari had generic graphics commands that worked in all it's 15 graphic modes unlike for example Apple which had special incompatible commands for each of its 5 modes.
Atari's engineers went out of their way to reserve half of the first 256 bytes of ram (a special part of ram on 6502 based machines) where as both Apple and Commodore's engineers used the entire area and left nothing for user programs leaving programmers on those systems to rely on hacks.
The Atari systems (along with the Amiga) are the only consumer systems to have ever supported "overscan" allowing you to generate an image that uses the entire TV display. Apple, Commodore, IBM etc all have a border around what they display. It's only in recent years that PCs and Macs have caught up without special hardware.
You're wrong on some of what you've posted. Max res was 320x192. You could coax a little more X/Y by encrouching in the overscan areas but nowhere near as much as you cite.
The 400 lacked a monitor out but the 800 had one (composite only)
The 10K ROM was the OS 'personality' module. All 800's has that plus 1 to 3 16K RAM carts which is what the article says. You also had 2 x ROM carts (LEFT/RIGHT) under the front flap.
The stuff about the OS is largely correct although the first 256 bytes was used by the OS (with the odd byte here and there not used) and held the OS vectors etc. - perhaps you're thinking of page 6 which was left free for programmers.
1) bytes 128-255 were reserved for user programs. The OS used none of those bytes. Basic used a few but left most of them unused unlike C64 and Apple 2 (both of which I also programmed).
As for resolution, The standard display when you booted the computer was mode 3 which was 40x24 8x8 characters or 320x192. Putting the system in overscan made it 48 across or 384 pixels. Boot up your Atari or an emu and basic and type
POKE 54286,0 (turn of interrups so the OS doesn't reset the next line)
POKE 54272,35 (make the display 384 pixels wide)
Now start editing the default display list.
POKE 39968,2 (turn on the top 8 lines)
POKE 39969,2 (turn on the next 8 lines)
POKE 39970,2 (turn on the next 8 lines)
You now have 384x216. Of course nothing will appear in those lines unless you write code to use them or create a display list that sets the vram address.
A few more pokes will add at least another 24 lines to the bottom to get 384x240. Maybe not 262 but a far cry form the 80x192 listed at the start of the article. Change the numbers from 2 to something else for different graph modes on those lines.
If you are using an EMU you'll need to configure it to display all of overscan mode. Most emu's default to clipping those areas.
As for the OS, there is no "personality module". The Atari 800 had an 8k OS rom 1k of which was the standard font. The rest simple services like device io and booting, the driver system and a few other small things. If there was such a thing it was added to far later modules. I programmed Atari software from the 400/800 era up though the 130XE.
Regarding the above, here's a snippet from A Guide to Atari 400/800 Computers (1982):
"ANTIC can control each scan line on the television receiver; however, not all 262 lines are visible. Because of a broadcast compensation factor called overscan, the actual number of visible scan lines on a television receiver is closer to 200 than 260. In the interest of compatibility with hundreds of different brands of televisions, Atari set a conservative standard of 192 scan lines for its graphics displays under BASIC."